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They had sex for the first time after their disastrous visit to the brothel, on a mattress covered in sleeping bags in an abandoned house in Maine. Dean wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but the need rolling off Castiel had been surprising and a big part of him had been grateful there was still one person in the world who wanted him, needed him.
It was only afterwards that he thought about Jimmy and started to feel sick, because at least Ruby had been riding a corpse. “Cas…” And he can’t, so he just buried his face in Castiel’s neck and didn’t ask, he never asked.
“Dean.” Castiel’s voice was calm again, he sounded like an angel again. “Thank you.”
“S’no problem.” He managed to snatch an hour of sleep pressed between Castiel and a sleeping bag that still smelled like his brother and didn’t dream.
He thought maybe it was a one-time thing, until he woke up out of a nightmare and Castiel was sitting on the edge of the bed, his trench coat and suit jacket already off. “Would you like company?”
“Yeah. Lose the shoes though, at least.” He got to watch Castiel take off the rest of his clothes and set them, folded neatly, on a chair then threw back the covers and made room in the bed.
It wasn’t awkward at all, sharing a bed with Castiel, even though he’d always imagined it would be, since the guy didn’t actually sleep and in the morning he gets sex and a bacon egg sandwich so all in all, it’s one of the better nights he’s had in a long time.
Of course, Zachariah found him the next day.
2014
When they made camp outside the hot zone, Dean lay awake thinking about Castiel and those women and the pills and wondered what the hell he did to Cas to turn him into that, because the line about banging gongs was definitely his. After his turn on guard duty, he tracked down Castiel’s sleeping bag and nudged it with his foot. Cas wasn’t asleep, he was just staring vacantly at the sky. “Hey. Talk to me, man. How could I let this happen to you?”
“You were fine with the drinking but not the pills. When I wouldn’t stop, you moved out.” There was flatness to Castiel’s voice and Dean wondered what he’d taken to come down far enough to sleep.
“And the women?” He hoped that wasn’t his idea because this is all hard enough to live with already.
“Jimmy prefers women. If I wasn’t going to be with you, that was easier.”
Dean wasn’t going to touch that one with a ten foot pole and he unrolled his own sleeping bag next to Castiel’s. In the morning, everyone but him died.
They got a new hotel, one without a preacher out front, and if he was gentler than the other two times, Castiel didn’t seem to notice or care.
It’s only later, when Dean was thinking about round two, kissing his way down Castiel’s neck and across his shoulders that Castiel speaks. “I have changed and I can’t promise you I won’t change more. If I was still the man you first met, I wouldn’t be naked in your bed.”
“It’s just a thing people say.” He pressed one last kiss in the crook of Castiel’s neck and rolled onto his back. The ceiling of the hotel room looked just like every other room he’d stayed in his entire life. “Just don’t leave me to have orgies with hot women.”
“What, exactly, did Zachariah show you?” Castiel had pushed up onto his elbows and he was doing that bird head-tilt thing.
“Tomorrow.” He pulled Castiel back down beside him. He wanted round 2, and then pancakes. After the pancakes, he wanted his brother back. It’s the last night he feels hungry.
Gabriel was the last straw. Even if he’d thought Sam was crazy to try and recruit a Trickster, it’s a different ball game when he realized they actually had a renegade archangel on their hands. An archangel would have been a hell of a thing to have on their side.
Sam had to remind him they hadn’t eaten all day and he forced down a burger. It was tasteless and he didn’t feel any different after eating it. They got a hotel room and Sam slept but Dean couldn’t. He drank, but the whiskey might as well be have bottom shelf plastic bottle shit for all he can taste it.
His cellphone chirped and when he checkedthe text message Dean slipped on shoes and went out to the car. Castiel was sitting in the back seat and there was still a smudge of blood on his face. Dean crawled in back with him and rubbed it away with his thumb. “He’s wrong. We can still change it. You’ll find God and we’ll change it.”
Food, liquor and sleep have all lost their appeal but he still wanted Castiel. He wasn’t the first angel Dean had in the back of the Impala but if he thought of Anna at all, it was only when Castiel smacked his head against the roof because he was taller than her.
The night before Carthage, they had another round of last night on Earth sex.
All joking with Jo aside, he can’t remember the last time he looked at a woman and wanted her. The only one he can dredge any sexual attraction up for these days is Castiel but that’s not lust. Dean is capable of some pretty serious self-deception, but when you had an angel crawling willingly into your bed the time for lies was over. “Love you. Don’t die on me tomorrow.”
“I will endeavor not to die.” The first part of the sentence seemed to take a moment to sink in. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Dean went back to unbuttoning Castiel’s shirt.
“Dean, I never asked-“
“You didn’t have to.” He pushed the shirt off Castiel’s shoulders and watched it fall to the ground before giving him a shove towards the bed. “That’s not how it works.”
It’s the last thing he wants. By the next night, Jo and Ellen are dead and he doesn’t want anything anymore.